


Sometimes it's the Misery

by occludes



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-06
Updated: 2012-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-03 04:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/occludes/pseuds/occludes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, he thinks Sherlock ruined his life. Not the time they had together, but all the time that stretches out after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes it's the Misery

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt fill! "Sherlock/John - I'd rather be miserable with you than without you."

Everyone feels sorry for John, and he hates it.

So he smiles, because it tells them _No, really, I'm all right_ , even if he isn't at all, because he's just so sick of being looked at like someone who will crumble to pieces at the slightest infraction.

Ridiculous, that. Anything that could be ruined inside him shattered the moment Sherlock said _Goodbye, John_. There is nothing left to break.

 

**The funeral was lovely. Lestrade gave a very touching speech.**

**You would have hated the whole thing.**

**-J**

 

John isn't a delicate flower in need of protection or sympathy. He's a grown man. A _soldier_. He's lost something important, yes, but the world continues moving and John stumbles along to keep up.

Maybe he can't fill the significant void Sherlock Holmes took up in his life, but he can try to reconstruct something around it. He can try for some sense of purpose, some sort of happiness, at least outwardly, and the thoughts that run through his head when he can't sleep at night _why why why don't be dead please come back Sherlock I'm sorry_ will be kept safely tucked away with the nightmares of Sherlock leaping from rooftops where no one will ever see them.

 

**It really gets me, you know. That you purposely tricked me into leaving you alone so you could meet him on the roof.**

**I should have been there with you.**

**-J**

 

In the back of his closet, he keeps a paper bag containing the clothing Sherlock wore when he jumped.  The day after the funeral, Molly showed up at his new flat. She held out the bag but would not meet his eyes.

"I thought you'd like to have these. They've been washed up and all."

John wanted to shake her and ask why she would do such a thing. When he takes out the scarf and presses his face into it, it smells like laundry soap and nothing like Sherlock.

 

**Molly's all tore up about this. She doesn't come to Christmas anymore. I hardly see her. I don't think she knows what to say to me.**

**But something about it is strange.**

**–J**

People come to him with cases now. _'I heard about Mister Holmes. Terrible thing. Are you taking on clients of your own?'_

The first time it happens, John stares at the bloke and has to bite back the overwhelming urge to hit him in his abnormally large nose. "I'm not a consulting detective. I was just..." Something. Nothing. He doesn't know. An assistant. A friend. A companion. He was never the brains, just the common sense.

"Well, sure, but you worked with the man. Surely you've picked up on some of his techniques?"

John turns them down. Or tries to, at least. But they keep coming and he needs the money and he _tries_. Sometimes, he even solves cases. Sometimes, if he keeps Sherlock's scarf in his pocket and his fingers always wrapped around his phone, he can pretend this isn't a _John Watson_ case and he's simply doing all the footwork because Sherlock is sitting in their flat on Baker Street, too bored to bother with something so easy

But any minute he'll text, asking John to fetch milk, or demanding that he return home right away because something more important has cropped up.

**I'm helping Lestrade on this case. Keep trying to look at things how you would.**

**Failing. Need help.**

**Please come, if convenient.**

**–J**

 

This was _their_ normal.

Sometimes the clues are there for him and there's this unseen hand guiding him to conclusions. _Observe, John. You're looking but you aren't **observing**_ and that niggling voice in the back of his head frustrates him but spurs him onward and, god, his chest aches and aches and aches.

 

**If inconvenient, come anyway. –J**

 

Since he isn't blogging anymore, he texts Sherlock's phone. Often. He isn't even sure what happened to the ruddy thing; if the police confiscated it, if someone scooped its pieces off the ground. He texts because—just like his therapist has lectured him on doing—he's grasping hold of anything he can.

If he doesn't fully register Sherlock is gone, he doesn't have to mourn. He doesn't have to accept it.

And he doesn't have to figure out a way to live without him.

Then there are the nights where he's had a touch too much to drink and his new flat is so empty and cold and he texts _I miss you I miss you I miss you, you stupid bastard_ and he falls into a fitful sleep and doesn't want to wake up and see Sherlock hasn't texted back. John keeps holding out hope that he will. Because sometimes, Sherlock made him miserable and crazy and manic. Sometimes, John wanted to hit him and hug him in the same breath.

But he holds out hope because in the end, Sherlock never, ever let him down.

 

**I punched Anderson yesterday. He said I was better off, safer now. No more bombs and snipers and kidnappings.**

**I'll admit, sometimes it was pretty miserable. Sometimes you drove me up the wall.**

**Sometimes.**

**-J**

Sometimes, he thinks Sherlock ruined his life. Not the time they had together, but all the time that stretches out _after_. All the months wherein John decorates a Christmas tree by himself without violin music as background noise, and he takes cases Sherlock would have turned his nose up at because John can't afford to be picky.

There are days where he buys milk but there's no need, because Sherlock hasn't used up all of what they had and John ends up with a fridge full of milk and actual food instead of leftover takeout and body parts.

 

**But I'd rather be miserable with you than without you.**

**–J**

"We need to get you back to normal," Ella says, and John rolls his eyes to the ceiling and thinks _normal_ is never what he's wanted. He wants it even less now. He will run as far, far away from normal as he possibly can. Because normal lives?

 

Normal lives do not have Sherlock Holmes.


End file.
